


Abandoned.

by FeliciaAmelloides



Series: A Oneshot a Day... [56]
Category: Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Genre: AU, Canon Divergence, M/M, Ralph Climbed a Tree, Simon Is Alive, badly written tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-29 05:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13920717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeliciaAmelloides/pseuds/FeliciaAmelloides
Summary: Ralph made the wrong decision in trying to evade the hunters. Suddenly, he finds himself abandoned and alone on the island.But there's one person who was abandoned too...





	Abandoned.

**Author's Note:**

> A weird AU where Ralph climbed a tree and Simon didn't die, but instead lived in hiding for a while trying to recover from his almost-fatal injuries up until the forest fire. This isn't gonna make much sense.
> 
> TW- Injuries, blood, fire.

The bitter cold of the sea closed in on the dark-haired boy as he lay, silent, just out of its sweet embrace. His breaths were slow and shallow; blood seeped from several nasty gashes adorning his flesh into the salty water which did nothing to ease the pain. Just lying there was agony. He couldn't move, or breathe, or speak.

Memories of the previous night came and went. It was raining. There were screams. He was being chased by the people he'd once sang with, attacked by the person he admired the most, torn apart by a hundred tiny hands, clawing and ripping their way to his skin.

The Lord of the Flies. The Beast. It had warned him of such things. Of the danger hidden within a human being.

He should have arrived sooner. Acted faster. Then maybe none of this would have happened.

Maybe they'd all be okay.

The sky changed from blue to yellow to orange to red and then to black before Simon had gained enough strength to move. His wounds were still open and leaking, probably infected but he had no way of telling.

Gaining energy with each slight movement of his fingers, he slowly but surely wrenched himself from the water, cutting himself on the small, sharp rocks which had been digging into his back as he went.

It hurt, but he made it.

The beach seemed a desolate and lonely place now that everyone he'd once known had turned against him. He wanted to go there, to see Ralph again. But he couldn't. Not yet. Not like this.

The boy painfully dragged himself towards the mountain to find shelter from the fear drifting through the icy night air.

*

The fire was violent, hot and terrifying. Ralph couldn't tell how close it was to him. His eyes were tightly shut and his arms locked in a vice-like grip around the trunk of the tree he'd climbed to hide from the hunters. Already he could tell that it had been a poor decision to stay in one place. He would be smoked out eventually, and forced to return to the ground, where the savages could get to him.

A stick sharpened at both ends. That ever-present reminder of the consequences for being caught tugged at the corner of his mind, only fuelling the fear-induced nausea rising in his gut.

Resisting the urge to cry, Ralph held the tree even tighter than before, shuffling so that he wouldn't fall out. Somehow, he felt that this tree would protect him.

Then he realised something.

The ululations had stopped.

Opening his eyes quickly, he scanned the area for hunters. None were present. He then heard a loud, bellowing sound, like the sound of the conch only more refined. A trumpet, perhaps.

A trumpet...

The curtain hung over his brain for a long moment as he tried to process everything that was happening. He waited, frustrated at the slow speed of his brain because something was happening and he needed to know what.

It clicked. A trumpet meant that someone had arrived on the island and was calling them. An adult. A ship. Rescue.

The thundering of feet, and suddenly hordes of savages were racing past his tree to reach the source of the noise. Ralph wanted so desperately to join them, but the fear at the forefront of his mind held him back. They could still kill him. Maybe the trumpet was another of Jack's tricks to lure him out. Maybe they found another conch.

He wouldn't be fooled.

The last pair of feet went past him, and he started to pay attention to the jungle at last. One of the first things he noticed was that the fire was starting to get much too close for comfort. Again, it took a while for him to realise what this meant for him, and with a tiny yelp he scrambled out of the tree, getting cuts and bruises on his body as he went down, and started to run once more.

A faint horn sounded up ahead. The call of a ship.

That was when it finally settled in. There hadn't been any tricks after all. He was so stupid...

Angry tears started to fall as he realised that he'd just killed himself without even realising it.

A ship had come, and it had taken everyone off the island. Everyone but him.

*

Once the threat of the hunters was gone, Ralph knew that he couldn't stop and cry. Not yet. Not while the fire was still present. Since he couldn't put it out either, the only thing he could do was head to the mountain. The top was the only place on the island where he'd be safe from those flames.

The run took all of his energy, but he made it. Screaming, crying, hating himself more with every step and injuring himself with every wrong move, he crawled and wrenched himself up the pile of pink rocks to the very top of the mountain, fear and inhibitions pushed aside in the name of survival.

Collapsing onto the smooth, flat surface of the mountain-top, he barely noticed the other person sitting there until he spoke.

"Ralph." His voice was filled with a myriad of emotions, yet at the same lacked any, probably due to spending such a long time away from other humans. Ralph looked up slowly, and came eye-to-eye with the dark-haired, green-eyed boy he'd thought was dead for so many endless weeks.

"Simon?" The blond asked weakly, still staring at the other as if he'd disappear. He didn't, instead nodding in response to the question with a small smile.

"They left you behind." Smile giving way to a frown, he kept that quiet, serious attitude that Ralph had always sort of admired in him. Sometimes he seemed to be the only person on the island capable of being perfectly composed.

"You died." Not quite answering each other, they continued to stare in a mixture of fear, trepidation, and something else akin to the first time they'd been in that place together.

"I almost died," Simon said thoughtfully after a moment of silence, "But I didn't."

Ralph found himself smiling bitterly despite himself, "Well, here's your chance. There's no food, no ship, no island, no nothing. We'll both die here, on this mountaintop, with no chance of rescue."

"I meant what I said." The cryptic response caught Ralph off guard, and he frowned in confusion.

"What?"

"On the other side of the island. When we were trying to find the Beast. That you'd get back alright." Oh. That. How could he still believe that when they were so clearly going to die?

"That was before the island burned down."

"Still. You'll get back." Simon continued to look at him with those deep green eyes filled with wisdom so far beyond his years, and Ralph found himself really wanting to believe his words. But it was so hard.

"It's been a long time." He said softly, moving a little closer to the dark-haired boy. He smiled with the kindness a parent might give to their misguided child, and moved so that they were right next to each other, legs touching.

"Yeah. It has."

They remained there, island in ruins below them, as the sky changed from grey to a variety of colours before finally settling to black.

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure what happened, but I like the idea for this one. Basically Ralph got so absorbed in fear and mistrust that the ship left without him (because all the hunters went to the ship whilst he stayed in the tree and none of them were going to say 'There's another guy somewhere, but he's not here right now'). Simon had been living around the mountain for a while trying to heal (no one ever went there in canon after his death, so in this oneshot no one found him either) and climbed to the top when he was alerted to the fire in hopes of finding safety.
> 
> That's how they met up. I didn't think it through very well though, eheheh;;;
> 
> Prompt- Leaving something behind.
> 
> I like how vague this prompt is. It leaves a lot open to interpretation, which is nice.
> 
> Original Number- 323.


End file.
